Sometime ago while looking through one of my suppliers’ sites I came across Tahitian Black Sand and I just had to buy it. Every time I see it I wonder what I am going to do with it. So when Amy announced this month’s challenge was to recreate a landscape scene I immediately thought of doing a black sand beach. I Googled Tahitian black sand beaches and quite frankly the results were not very inspirational – they just were not very pretty. I keep putting off making the soap and then I got busy preparing for the first big craft show of my season which was last Saturday. So Amy’s email saying it was time to post came as a surprise.
I thought about skipping this month but I really wanted to use that darn sand. Another search and I came up with a picture that I thought might be workable and have a little bit of interest to it. I studied the picture quickly and made a drawing of how I thought I could pour the soap.
Ideally I should have allowed at least two days to complete the layers but I knew the fragrance (Crafters Choice Beach) is a fast mover. I decided that I would mix my colors and add the fragrance to each color just prior to pouring and hoped the layer would set up while I was preparing the next one. It did work but not as well as I had hoped – there is some minor mixing of the colors. When I got to the sky, I realized that I had not left enough white for the clouds. I used what I had and then called on my cache of melt and pour soap for the balance.
It is in the mold. Nothing to do now except wait and hope.
Since the soap was in a silicon mold I was afraid I might have to wait an extra day or two to remove it – talk about last minute. But I gently pulled one side and it released easily. The soap popped right out. Here are the result:
Overall I am pretty pleased with the way it turned out and am really happy that I didn’t take the easy way out and just skip this one. Now I am looking forward to trying soap with sand as an exfoliant.
Thanks Amy this was another fun challenge.
